I have spent nearly twenty years helping governments, companies and organizations to innovate, become more entrepreneurial, and prepare for an innovation-driven global economy. I am currently a Senior Fellow with Northeastern University and the Center for American Progress. Most recently, I served as President Obama’s Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where I had the chance to manage the President’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I worked with twenty-six federal agencies, over 500 universities, and leading technology companies to develop strategies to increase commercialization, innovation, and entrepreneurship across the United States. Prior to that, I spent many years as Executive Director of the Deshpande Foundation, an international philanthropy focused on building regional innovation ecosystems. Our “Sandboxes” showed that contextually-relevant innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems can be built and nurtured anywhere in the world – from rural India to MIT. I have also been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative and a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. I am currently advising several startups, universities and governments on their global strategy.

What The State Of The Union Speech Means For Innovation And Entrepreneurship

For all of us concerned about the future of the American economy and the creation of quality jobs in the United States, the President’s State of the Union hit on some important notes. He continues to beat the drum for critical national issues like immigration reform, quality education and fairer international trade. And there were important call’s to restore federal research funding and protect innovators and entrepreneurs from patent trolls. Having served in the Obama Administration, I know that the initiatives launched last night by the President are all trying to create high quality jobs across the United States and across industries. But if these efforts are to succeed at the federal level, we need a narrative that connects the dots better between innovation, entrepreneurship, education and job creation.

On immigration, I was glad to hear him remind Congress and the nation that we still need to pass comprehensive immigration reform. For startups, immigration reform has become critical for a few reasons. We know that the majority of graduate students and PhD’s in the STEM fields are foreign-born. Many want to stay in the United States. We also know that a large percentage of our innovative startup companies, particularly on the Coasts, are founded by immigrant entrepreneurs. Finally, we know that in some fields, particularly the life sciences, our innovation is advancing so quickly that there are sometimes only a few people in the world with the talent, skills and expertise to work on the problem. Immigration reform has the chance to open these three bottle necks. On the small business side, immigrants across the United States are investing in smaller gateway cities and revitalizing urban areas with small businesses that employ 5-25 people. Immigration reform is needed for them to be unified with their families, access credit to grow their businesses and employ other members of their communities.

Scientists and researchers across the country were glad to hear the President’s call to restore research funding to pre-sequester levels. As I have stated before, the sequester took a significant toll on research in the United States. The reduction in funding, and the threat of further reductions impacted direct research and indirectly affected the R&D workforce. We cannot risk a disruption in our innovation and R&D infrastructure – it is still the greatest advantage we have as a nation. It impacts the researchers, but also the entrepreneurs who seek to commercialize their work, and all Americans who benefit from that innovation downstream.

It is critical that we tie the pieces of the job creation story together. As the President stated, we know that job creation in the United States has been driven by entrepreneurs and small business for several years now. We know that entrepreneurs require talented people from around the world. Hence the importance of a high quality education in the United States, from pre-K through college; as well as the ability for hard-working individuals to come to the United States. And we know that this support for innovation and entrepreneurship must be across the United States and across industries or we will continue to see disparities of opportunity around the country and widening income inequality.

There are a couple of areas that probably don’t warrant time in the State of the Union that I believe should be a part of the discussion. The first is the ongoing challenge to finance innovation and startups in more expensive sectors like energy, manufacturing and life sciences. The cost to bring a drug to market can now be over $1 billion. Several major venture capitalists have withdrawn from the clean energy space. Manufacturing may be returning to the United States, but how can we constructively support this trend at a time when investors are seeking bigger and faster returns? Several Presidential commissions, including PCAST and NACIE, are thinking about these issues. There needs to be an ongoing discussion about how we finance our startups, and support them over a longer period of time when necessary. And of course, what is the role of government in all of this?

Finally, I would like to see a discussion about job training that is proactive, rather than reactive. One of the defining challenges of the innovation economy is the difficulty that innovation-driven startups have in finding talent. They can find the first 20 employees, but as they scale to 500, they have trouble finding the technical talent to create the product and the sales talent that understands how the product works and can sell it. This goes back to the President’s discussion about job training. We don’t just need to rapidly reform our workforce investment and job training programs, we need them to be re-organized around the speed of innovation. In the last few years, we have seen the migration of social media from Web and computer-based to mobile-based. This requires a different skill set for engineers. But it wasn’t until Facebook and LinkedInLinkedIn became household names that most retraining institutes even created programs around social media. And they still haven’t adjusted their curriculum’s to train for the mobile web. Vice President Biden’s task force will be very important on these matters, as will other efforts like the Center for American Progress’s efforts to grow private sector apprenticeships. If we can connect the Administration’s priorities around education and research to the downstream needs of companies, like job training, then we can have an impact on the speed with which our economy moves.

English: U.S. President delivers the while standing in front of President of the Senate and Speaker of the House . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.